


the captain's (a) girl?

by hermionewrites



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, POV Outsider, any romance was originally background.., but this is just who i am, do i care about technicalities on anything? no i do not, fun not so mysterious mysteries await..., it became increasingly less so the more i plotted, no I do not know where this sprung from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23351272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermionewrites/pseuds/hermionewrites
Summary: “Bucky, do you think Peggy is y’know...seeing Captain America?”-Who is Captain America? Who IS he seeing? Why does Peggy constantly glare at Private Lorraine? And why is Bucky acting so strangely?Steve Rogers is determined to find out.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Pvt. Lorraine
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	the captain's (a) girl?

**Author's Note:**

> I must preface this fic by saying I am neither American nor from the 40s, so if even Peggy's speech is accurate, let alone anyone else's or the setting... it will be a pleasant shock for us all. 
> 
> Also the title of this fic’s doc has been Margaeret the whole time i’ve been writing, and I only realised as I prepared to post that it... probably needed a proper title. 
> 
> Also please ignore the very contrived reference that I just didn't bother to cut.

“Bucky, do you think Peggy is y’know...seeing Captain America?” 

Steve had been considering this for a while. At first it had just been a light suspicion, and he had chided himself for his own presumptiveness. Just because Agent Carter was one of the few women working with Cap didn’t mean she couldn’t resist him. But as he got to know Agent Carter - Peggy, now - better, he realised there were some things that didn’t quite add up. Or rather, added up to an entirely different picture to what was on the surface. 

Bucky turned, and fixed Steve with an amused look. “I didn’t think you were the type to go for all that gossip, Stevie? Not like it’s a new idea, prettiest dame on base seeing our glorious captain. Not exactly a new storyline, isn’t there even some ‘Betty Carver’ character planned as his girl for those comics they’re making?”

At the mention of this suggested character Steve winced slightly. He had been the unfortunate man chosen to mention this to Peggy, deemed the most likely to return alive. He had, but his eardrums may never recover. 

“It’s not just that.” he protested, “Just… she seems to know so much about him, like she always seems to know where he’ll be. Every night she’s always the one to say why he can’t make it. He never tells anybody else. And whenever anyone mentions him she has this… secret smile.”

“Secret smile,” Bucky muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes.

Steve continued, oblivious, “Maybe I should just ask Peggy. I shouldn’t talk about this without her knowledge. Or is asking that even less respectful than speculating about it?” 

Bucky shifted uncomfortably, “Look... Steve, I wasn’t going to mention this, but I reckon you need to know before you go off asking Agent Carter embarrassing questions and getting a fist to the jaw. You know… whatshername... that private Agent Carter’s always glaring at recently? The blonde one?”

“Private Lorraine?” Steve had been wondering about that. Private Lorraine had always seemed friendly enough to him, and Peggy wasn’t the type to dislike someone unreasonably, especially one of the few other women on base. 

“Well last week, after that mission we had with Cap, the one where Agent Carter had to stay back? I was on my way to drop my kit back and I saw… what was pretty clearly Private Lorraine getting cosy with the good captain.” Bucky grinned, “Lucky guy. Or lucky lady.” 

Bucky’s following wink left Steve unsettled for a familiar, confusing moment, but he shook it off and continued undeterred. “Surely that only proves it! If Cap’s Peggy’s guy and he’s going off with Private Lorraine…” 

“Next thing you’ll be telling me you think you know who Cap himself is.” Bucky’s voice lowered conspiritually. “I was a bit disappointed at how tame it all was, honestly. No reveals, identity or other there. Even the helmet stayed on. Now hurry up, we’re late for one of those awful meetings, focus your investigations on the Nazis instead.” 

Steve rushed forward to walk alongside Bucky, their pace matching in a way discordant with their drastically different heights, speaking of their years spent together. Even as he walked his mind continued to whir. Perhaps Bucky was on to something just then, unintentionally… Perhaps if he wanted to find his answers, his next thought should instead be who exactly Cap could be. 

-

Steve had never liked waiting. Ever since he was younger and a group of older boys had snuck up on him and beat him up. And since again when he was slightly older and the same group had come and shoved him in a bin… and then again when he was a couple of months older still and… you get the idea. So when he felt a hand on his shoulder as he stood waiting for Peggy it was more than understandable that he jumped several inches into the air, momentarily putting him above the, not particularly tall, woman standing next to him. 

“I didn’t know anyone actually did that, jumped off the ground in shock.” Private Lorraine chuckled from beside him.

“I- uh- sorry, ma’am, I didn’t see you there,” Steve stuttered out. He had never actually spoken to the woman who seemed to be Peggy’s new on base nemesis, and Cap’s new girl. He hadn’t even been anywhere near her. And certainly not this near her, he thought, as she seemed to move in even closer. To be near enough to notice her lipstick shade (a pink, lighter than what Peggy wore) seemed to him to be quite possibly rather a betrayal, and quite certainly rather a Situation. The thought crossed his mind that there needed to be some version of an army extraction for terribly awkward situations. Especially ones where you realise the other person has been talking the whole time you have been considering this and now seem to have backed you into the corner of the room without you realising. 

“-a dance, perhaps, Rogers?” 

“Uh, I’m honoured but… if you don’t mind me saying, I thought you and Cap-”

A throat cleared from the doorway, blocked from view by the woman in front of him. When she turned, revealing the cause of the noise, Steve wished his need for an extraction team had been specific to not including the main member of the actual extraction team. 

Unusually tall and visibly strong, Peggy Carter towered over most other women, and a large portion of men. Combined with maintaining clearly complex hair and makeup…she cut an intimidating figure at the best of times. But though he had found himself in awe of her before, he had never been so sure as he was in this moment, seeing the look on her face, that he would rather take his chances with a Hydra squadron. 

It wasn’t even that she looked incredibly angry. It was not the face she had when he saw her stand against battalions of Hydra soldiers. It was much worse than that. A mix of, yes, some semblance of anger, but also, bewilderingly, sadness and… betrayal. He hadn’t realised her dislike for Private Lorraine ran so deep. 

This flash of deep feeling only lasted a moment before Peggy disciplined her features into the strict professionalism he hadn’t seen directed at him for months. She looked at him, her mouth a thin line. “Steve. I’m ready for you, if you’re not otherwise occupied.” Her eyes flicked for a single moment to the blonde woman beside him, her expression inscrutable, before, without another word, she turned and strode back down the hallway, low heels clicking away. As he finally moved his gaze he saw Private Lorraine was still watching the door with an unreadable look on her face. When she finally spoke, her tone was very different to her dance offer: 

“No. Cap is… Cap and I are… nothing. We’re nothing.” A frustrated look crossed her face, as she exclaimed derisively, “I’m a free woman.”

Perhaps this all ran deeper than Steve had thought.

-

Steve winced at the unmistakable sound of the slamming punching bag as he quietly opened the door to the training room. All the other soldiers seemed to have tactfully evacuated, and he could see why. Peggy was striking the bag in a way that concerned him more for it than her, though he suspected her technique probably followed less the rules she had taught him and more the principle of letting out as much emotion as she possibly could, without ever having to talk about it. 

It felt rather like walking in on somebody crying, and Steve suddenly felt as if he should leave, that he was intruding. But it was too late, without turning she had noticed his presence in the room. 

“Ready for your lesson?”

It seemed she was pretending nothing had happened. Steve schooled his features, “Uh, yeah, I was wondering if we could iron out that technique you explained to me yesterday? The ducking one?”

Peggy dusted her hands off. “Yes. Well. The most important thing you can remember about that technique is what you’re trying to do. You must use your size to your advantage, duck under punches and around them rather than making yourself a target. Which your friend tells me you are prone to doing. Don’t let yourself get, ah, cornered.” 

At this she looked faintly embarrassed, “I’ll show you.” 

They spent the next hour repeating the moves she had taught him until his muscles ached, and his hair was sticking to his forehead. Once Peggy seemed to think he had sufficiently mastered that move she moved on to another, rather more drastic, and probably rather more useful, using your enemy’s own weight to fling them quite impressively for the strength she claimed it took. He always wondered how Peggy knew so many moves suited to a person far smaller than herself. When he had asked she had just laughed and said she had “had a growth spurt”, but it must have been rather a drastic one, given how tall she was now.

As they walked to lunch together amicably he felt that whatever tension had come from the interlude with Private Lorraine had now dissipated, and he let out a sigh of relief.  
-

Their next mission had been a particularly perilous one, leaving them all rather shaken. Cap had gone on ahead alone into their suspected Nazi trap, insisting they should stay back, for their own safety. Steve was not one for… following orders, so had instead followed him into the suspected trap. And it was very lucky that he had, as, had he not seen the bullet heading for Cap’s head while he was distracted fighting another soldier, and yelled out a warning, the Captain would likely have not made it back to base. Captain America was tough. Not invincible. 

However, this terrifying moment was not all that preoccupied Steve on the journey back to base. When Cap had been fighting off the soldiers, the way he flung one of them felt very familiar to Steve. 

It was Peggy’s move. Had Peggy taught Cap too, he wondered. Maybe he also had a ‘growth spurt’. But then surely that meant she knew his secret identity? Perhaps he had been talking to the wrong people about this…

-

Bucky was less receptive to this update. 

“You’re still on this, Stevie? Give it a rest, if we don’t know, we don’t know for a reason, and I don’t see why Agent Carter should have to suffer your questioning for it. ” 

“I’m just saying,” panted Steve, jogging to keep up with Bucky’s suddenly lengthening strides, “Surely if she helped train him, she’s most likely to know about it? And!” he almost jumped in his excitement “If she trained him she’d have the opportunity to get closer to him, get to know him, so them seeing each other would make perfect sense.”

“Yes, training with Agent Carter clearly makes a guy quite fond of her.” Bucky finally turned with a sigh, and a tinge of something entered his voice. “I think maybe you need to stop letting your crush on Agent Carter blind you to what is actually happening in the world around you.” And with that he turned away and walked down the hall, leaving Steve blinking after him. It was like Peggy’s exit from the Private Lorraine Situation all over again. 

Steve was just considering how, and exactly why, he should explain to Bucky his conclusion that his feelings towards Peggy Carter boiled down to just a deep respect, when he heard a sound that chilled him to his bones. A woman’s laugh. More specifically the laugh of the terrifying Private Lorraine, the woman who had cornered him. And it was drawing nearer. 

He looked around desperately for a place to hide as it became clear the footsteps were heading toward the room he was in. He bypassed the single door entirely and threw himself into the cupboard nearby, shutting the doors just as the one to the room creaked open, and he realised Lorraine was not alone, and she sounded angry. He dared a glimpse out and saw Private Lorraine and, almost unsurprisingly at this point, Captain America. What was surprising was how he, like Steve, had ended up backed up in the corner by the smaller blonde woman. Perhaps this was just how she talked to people. 

He felt extremely uncomfortable as he watched what he worried could be one of his closest friend’s guy ‘getting cosy’ as Bucky put it, with someone else. He could only catch some words of what was being said. “When I heard… - lost you… idiot!” At this her voice had risen beyond its previous lowness, holding a hand up as Cap seemed to try to interject “You go on about how you can’t be around me because I’ll get hurt. We’re in the middle of a war! We could all get hurt! We could all die and you won’t even let me say goodbye to the woman I- to you!” 

Lorraine’s voice broke, turning away from Cap. Cap, who was stepping forward and reaching up to take his, or as Steve finally realised, her helmet off. 

“Darling…” an English accented voice said softly. 

Steve’s mind was racing. Suddenly all the pieces were coming together. Peggy hadn’t taught Cap to do that move. He had not ‘also’ had a growth spurt. ‘He’ had not had anything. Peggy Carter had done it all herself. The strength, the knowledge of Cap’s life, it all made sense. Margaret Carter, British agent, was Captain America. 

All the while he had been coming to these realisations, the conversation outside his cupboard had been continuing. 

“You may have let Stark shove you in that superpowered oven-”  
“Dr Erskine made sure-”  
“I don’t care what Erskine did,” Steve was once more impressed with the skill Lorraine clearly shared with Peggy, the uncanny ability to make people shut up, “I care what you do, and so would he. Despite his genius he needed you to help him escape so he could help us, and you need to understand you need people to do the same sometimes. You would have died today if people hadn’t ignored your self sacrificing orders. Even that tiny guy with a crush on you-”

Here Steve almost let out a noise of indignation, was this really the impression he gave off to everybody?

“Even he was able to help in a situation full of German spies. So for God’s sake why can’t you just let yourself do something that will make you happy. I don’t know what I can do or say anymore.” By the end of her declaration, Private Lorraine seemed to have deflated from her anger. She looked dejected and defeated, and Steve felt a sharp stab of pity for the woman he’d found so terrifying before. 

Peggy looked even more distressed than he felt. “You don’t understand! It’s nothing you can say! You deserve better than this… secrecy and danger, even if I wasn’t Captain bloody America. Being around me will inevitably lead to you getting hurt and I can’t… I can’t let that happen.’

“I don’t care! Who are you to ‘let’ or not let these things happen? I am hurt right now because of this. Because you would rather throw yourself into life threatening situations than let anybody in.” Her anger seemed reignited, her voice filled with desperation and passion, “And you know what I know would hurt me? If the woman I love went and got herself needlessly, stupidly killed.” 

There was no true silence in a military base, but as these words hung in the air between the women, it felt to Steve as if the only sound left was his own breathing. 

“The- the woman you… love?”

“Yes, did I not mention my passionate feelings for, um-” Private Lorraine threw up her hands, “There aren’t enough women on this base for me to make this joke.” Her customary smirk had been patched on over the gaping vulnerability that her last statement had torn open, but her failed attempt at levity could not hide that her admission had been clearly unintentional, and just as clearly true. 

“You don’t need to,” Peggy said, in a voice softer than any he had ever heard her use, even that time she had comforted him when he had heard Bucky was prisoner (before Captain America, of course, he thought, had then rescued the presumed to be doomed soldiers.) As she looked up, looking at Lorraine meaningfully, Steve saw tears in her eyes. “I would be devastated too if the woman I love got hurt, but I would… understand she has the right to make her own choices.”

Lorraine sniffed a slightly teary laugh, “I’m sure the Colonel's secretary Rose will be delighted to hear it.”

“You finally think of someone and you use it to ruin a moment? Honestly.” But Peggy’s eye roll was fond and grateful as Lorraine’s smile grew. “But truly? Can I be forgiven?” 

“I’m sure Rose could find it in her heart.” Lorraine grinned, and opened her arms a little “Get over here.”

“Yes ma’am. Private? Captain? Your preferred title?”

“I think Your Majesty will do for now, thank you. I’m sure I was a queen in another life or two” 

Steve looked away as the two women smiled into a kiss, laughing at the logistical issue that presented. He wasn’t shocked, at least not at the fact they were both women, as he knew some of his war companions would be. He knew many people with similar leanings, and indeed knew a similar leaning himself. 

After several, for Steve, awkward seconds, the two women broke apart once again.

“Are we… we’re good now? You’re not going to run again?” Lorraine’s hand still rested against Peggy’s cheek, as if if she removed it, the other woman would disappear. 

Peggy placed her hand over hers, “Though I think there are conversations we need to have, perhaps… not in a random file room on base, I can tell you truthfully, I won’t.” Her smile twisted wryly, “And I’m sure one of those will involve an explanation of why on Earth you felt the need to terrify poor Steve last week?”

Lorraine looked faintly embarrassed, “Yes, well, I was very annoyed at you and just a little bit jealous of your pupil… I thought I might try and make the feeling mutual by pretending like I had any interest in sharing our… thing, in dancing with someone else. One of my more ill advised plans.” Before Peggy had a chance to reply, speaking the amused thoughts that had played out across her face, Lorraine had quickly begun replacing her helmet. “Now come on, my noble idiot. Put this back on and come and get changed. I’m going to enjoy confusing everyone with Peggy Carter’s sudden and inexplicable change of heart towards me.”

The look in Peggy’s eyes as Lorraine turned away told Steve all he needed to know about Peggy Carter’s heart. 

-

Once he was sure the two women had left, and got far away from the room he had been in, Steve had made his way out. It had certainly been an unexpected interlude. Who would have thought after weeks of wondering about the whole Peggy/Captain America/Private Lorraine affair it was all solved by a few minutes in the closet. But though he was now out of the closet, he had decided immediately that what had happened in that room was meant to stay in there. He wouldn’t even tell Bucky. 

He could imagine what Bucky would have said, laughed about the idea of the US army wrapping ‘some British dame’, no matter how much he respected Peggy really, in the Stars and Stripes and making her their icon, Cap in patriotic red lipstick, before teasing him about wanting her to sweep him off his feet. Which, to be fair, knowing her, superserum or not, she probably could. No, he wouldn’t tell Bucky. 

But through watching the romantic moment between the two women he had finally realised what he did have to tell Bucky.

-

A few hours, and a couple of very important conversations later, Steve was sitting in the bar with Bucky and the rest of the team. 

“Shame Cap’s can’t join us, secret identity and all,” Dugan commented idly. 

Bucky laughed, “He’d drink all you lightweights under the table,” There was a chorus of ‘oi’s’, and through the friendly scuffling Steve caught sight of Peggy walking in, dressed once again in her ordinary clothes, speaking closely with the blonde woman next to her. “Yeah, yeah, he would.” He muttered under his breath fondly. 

A moment later Bucky followed his gaze, and spoke from beside him, “Is that that Private Lorraine Peggy’s talking to? I guess they aren’t mortal enemies then, Stevie. Another theory dashed.” He squinted slightly as the two women drew closer, looking concerned, “Is Agent Carter alright? She has a strange look about her and… I think she’d got some of her lipstick on her throat? Huh. I thought she only wore red.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please do leave a comment if you liked it!


End file.
